2012

London Olympic organisers LOCOG are officially loco. They are not, however, low cost.

In an unprecedented step, LOCOG will charge people ten pounds to enter the main Olympic stadium precinct and watch events on the big screen. Up to 70,000 such tickets are for sale.

They will also charge people to watch the road cycling in the Surrey countryside, as well as charging ten pounds to watch Olympic tennis on the big screen on the famous “Henman Hill” at Wimbledon – the small patch of grass named after the mostly unthreatening Pom who lost four Wimbledon semi finals.

Continue reading "Ten pound poms to charge Olympic fans to breathe" »

‘Tis the season for many predictions. Here’s mine: The world will not end. Earth will not be ripped apart by titanic tectonic shifts, swallowed by a black hole, or smashed to blithereens by another planet.

Doomsday prophet Harold Camping had to crawl back into his shell after two failed predictions of the world’s end last year – this year there’s a broader belief that the end is nigh. This too will prove false.

The ‘2012 phenomenon’ is a meme, an idea that has spread across the world, gathering layers of bullshit as it goes. It was born from a murky misunderstanding of an ancient Mayan calendar.

Continue reading "The end is not nigh" »

I caught up with a group of old workmates just before Christmas and couldn’t believe my eyes.

In the 12 months since our last festive fizz, they’d all shrunk – and by a sizeable amount.

“I’ve lost 16 kilos,” cried one gleefully.

“Ten!” said another.

“More than 20,” said a third.

Continue reading "Think you can’t keep that resolution? Think again." »

Two thousand and twelve is a party away. Enjoy those final few cigarettes, that last packet of Tim Tams, that extra glass of wine, those lazy hours on the couch.

Revel in slouching, swearing, picking your nose and ignoring that old lady who needs help crossing the street. Behold the sum total of the vices your New Year’s resolutions will grab by the throat, tear limb from limb and consign to the bad habits of history.

For a day or two.

Continue reading "2012 is nearly here, so scoff down that last Tim Tam!" »

New Year’s Eve, it’s such a tempestuous event. Loved so passionately by many, hated by perhaps as many others. And indeed basically ignored by a fair portion too.

Underlying our conflicted emotions about NYE is the fact that it is the calendar equivalent of a cock-tease. The night that can promise so much and deliver so little.

Although I am not immune to it, I am still amused by the pressure the event seems to engender in many of us to be doing at least something, and if young and frisky to be doing something seriously cool, or at least something as good as all your friends, but preferably better.

Continue reading "Oh New Year’s Eve, you’re such a shameless tease" »

The world’s top space agency had a recent, desperate attempt to tap into popular culture - by having a crack at bad Hollywood science.

You really can’t fault NASA for trying. Last year it was told it must drop its dreams of replacing its dead Shuttle fleet and give up on its attempt to recapture the post Cold War frenzy of the world’s first Moon landing.

After all, this is the agency that brought the world its first reusable space craft and created the world’s second “permanent” space orbiter, SkyLab - a feat which continued to bring joy to earth-bound enthusiasts as its fiery debris rained down across our land and oceans.

Continue reading "NASA makes a failed landing on junk science" »

Every now and again a film comes along that defies your expectations, raises the bar for all film-makers working in the genre, and leaves you feeling much much better than when you went in.  When that happens you feel blessed; films that hit the mark like that come along so rarely they deserve your respect, your money and, dare I say it, your love.

I am an unashamed fan of disaster movies; they capture the essence of what is important about humanity and remind us that we people are one with nature and not apart from nature.  The first genuine disaster movie was Deluge, made in 1933 in which a paper model of NYC, and most especially the Statue of Liberty, is destroyed by a tsunami (Roland Emmerich referenced this in The Day After Tomorrow). Like all such films to follow it concerned the struggle of a good, honest working man, trying to protect his loved ones in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

Disaster films tend to introduce a new kind of special effect to the audience.  The Poseidon Adventure gave us the first realistic depiction of a capsised boat (though if you watch the capsising scene frame-by-frame you can actually see the actors pulling the table-cloths off the tables as they run past them).  The Towering Inferno was the first to show fire in reasonable proportion to the building (watch old episodes of The Thunderbirds  to see the opposite of this, where flames and water give away the scale of the models to humourous affect.)  Earthquake in 1974 introduced Sensurround to the jaded masses and The Swarm in 1978 (I saw it with my Mum) gave us some pretty convincing bee-clouds.

Continue reading "Best apocalypse I’ve ever had" »